Journal Entry 2: Crows in Japan

Although we can rarely see ravens in the main island of Japan, Japanese have a long history with crows. In the ancient era, crow was a symbol of auspicious sign. In Kojiki, oldest surviving book in Japan, crow is described as a servant of the God of the sun. The crow guides the Emperor Jinmu to the Yoshino River in the book, when the emperor starts to dominate the country. Even in the modern era, Japanese people use crow as a benign omen. Japan Football Association use this black bird as its symbol (http://www.jfa.or.jp/eng/jfa/outline/index.html).


On the other hand, crows have scared people with the color of the body and its smartness. It is said that someone will be dead when crows caw. In urban areas, we can see many crows since they know it easy to find some foods by picking through the garbage. In Ginza, one of the shopping spot in Tokyo, more than fourteen thousand crows are living. They have nests on power poles with hangers and other garbage. They steal soaps from human because they love oils. Sometimes they attack human because they are turf-conscious. As a result, they are not so popular in those areas.


Crows are so smart that we have a lot of observation to show their intelligence.

· Crows can have a good time by playing. They drop a stick of wood when flying, and they catch it in the air closed to the ground.

· Crows know which cats are pregnant and they carefully watch the pregnant cat. They try to steal a baby of the cat to eat them. They

· Crows can talk to each other but they have dialects and local languages. If crows in Tokyo area go to countryside, it is said that these moving crows cannot talk to the local crows.


When I was a child, I remember that I heard crows caw on the way home. It is time to go home when we hear crows croaking. In this sense, crows live in our human community. At the same time, crows are so smart that they can harm human being in many ways, as I mentioned above. They can live wherever human can live. Therefore, human being has to be smart enough to design for the peaceful co-existence of human and the one of the most intelligent birds.